I have made tres leche cake a few times with a recipe from delish. com, and I've always gotten rave reviews. I now want to double the recipe but I am unsure if the consistency will change, and how long I should bake it. Or is my best bet is to make 2 separate cakes? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Not advisable to double the recipe if you’re using volume measurements.
One cup of flour may weigh any where from 120 grams to 155 grams depending on how the cup is filled. Worse, there is no standard for manufacturing a measuring cup, so they vary in size.
Every time you fill the cup the amount of flour is different. But when you weigh flour 180 g is accurately 180 g every time. Not 191 g one time, 172g another time, 203g still another time. Same with the other ingredients. But when you use measuring cups and teaspoons you have no idea the amount of ingredients you’re actually using. It’s nothing more than an estimation.
All baking is based on baker’s percentages which is the ratio of ingredients against the weight of the flour. Baking is a chemical reaction of all the ingredients to heat and time. So the ratio of the ingredients is critical to the success of the baked goods. That’s why all baking is done by weight. The only bakers who bake by volume is American home bakers. Volume measurement the wrong way to bake because it totally inaccurate; recipes cannot be scaled up or down; and it’s inconsistent with each measurement.
When you double recipes you skew the ratios because the amount of flour to ingredients is not consistent to begin with, especially the leavening to flour ratio.
Every ingredient has a role in the structure of cake. The more the ratios are skewed, the more the cake texture changes. Eventually the structure of the cake will fail.
When professional bakers increase a cake recipe, we scale using baker’s percentages to ensure the ratios stay the same. But the recipe must be in metic weight to scale. All commercial baking, even in the US in done in metric weight using baker’s percentages for this reason.
Also when you make a large cake, when baking in a home oven you’re going to have issues with even baking. Tres leche is usually baked in a 9 x 13. So if you double the recipe, that’s going to be a 18 x 12 x 2 or maybe even a 18 x 15. I’m not sure of pan size because I would need to scale. That’s another reason baking is done in metric weight. You have to be able to scale to the correct pan size. To ensure all the batter baked, you’ll need to use several heating cores. Cake batter bakes from the outside in to the center. And with that much batter, by the time the center of the cake bakes the outer edges will be completely dried out and over baked.
These are heating cores. In this case I used them for a chiffon batter to bake as a layer cake. But when you have a really large cake with a lot of batter volume, several heating cores are needed to bake the batter. Since tre leche is left in the pan, soaked in milk while still warm, it would create a problem of removing the cores. You would need to cool the cake completely; remove the cores, return the cake to the pan and then soak the cake.
